IBM PCjr. Upgrades Part 2

When I first received my IBM PCjr. back in 2013, I was able to discuss most of the readily-available upgrades for the system that existed at that time.  https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/03/ibm-pcjr-upgrades.html  Now, almost six years later, we have some new upgrades available.  Let's see what modern conveniences can do for a 35-year old computer system


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You say "obsessed" as if it is a bad thing.

(Latest) Top 19 Best Highest Paying URL Shortener To Earn Money 2019

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Game 327: Darkwood (1992)

               

Darkwood

United States
Published as shareware in 1992 for the Macintosh
Date Started: 15 May 2019

Date Finished: 16 May 2019

Total Hours: 4
Difficulty: Easy (2/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)
Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

               

You are an orphan named Derek who wants to join the elite city guard of Darkwood, the safest city in the kingdom. Anyone who defeats the toughest creature in the arena will become Captain of the Guard. You start at Level 1 with no experience, a dagger, and 10 gold pieces. In front of you lies a town with a weapon shop, an armor shop, a magic shop, an inn, and an arena.
           

Starting the game. You click on buildings to enter them.

           

Because it's all you can afford, you buy some leather armor for 5 gold pieces before heading into the arena. You are offered battles against 20 creatures, listed in order of difficulty from a giant rat to a red dragon. You choose the giant rat. You defeat him in a few rounds of combat and get 10 gold pieces and 75 experience points. You rest up at the inn, and with your newfound wealth, you upgrade your weapon to a short sword. Back you go to the arena to face the next monster.

                   

Over the next several hours, you kill successively harder monsters, buy successively better equipment, and level up. You can save at any time, so death is not permanent. Eventually, you make your way to the arena wielding a Sword +5 Holy Avenger and wearing Full Plate +4, and you defeat the red dragon. Then the game is over.
         

Battering away at an enemy.

         
As tempting as it is to go immediately to GIMLET and make this the shortest entry of all time, there are a few more things to talk about. The first is that I've played this game before, when it was new. Someone had loaded it onto one of the lab computers at my university, and I copied it to floppy disk and brought it home. (This would have been around 1993, in my only Mac-owning period.) The entire time I played, I assumed I was playing a prologue, and once I was named Captain of the Guard, the game would open up and I'd perform a bunch of quests in my new role. I couldn't believe that it was over when it was over.
                                                            

Dad would be so proud.

          
I mis-remembered a few things about the game. I thought I remembered that you could only fight each creature once, but not only would this make for a 10-minute game, it would be impossible. You need to grind relentlessly against low-level creatures to survive and build wealth. The game doesn't really encourage you to test your limits. Even with reloading, if a goblin gives you 25 gold pieces and 110 experience points, and you can kill him 100% of the time (which you can after Level 2), what is your incentive to move up to a bugbear, which offers 40 gold pieces and 250 experience points but a 50% chance of death? Just fight the goblin twice. It only takes a few seconds.

You have to be careful not to be lured by the ghoul (400 gold, 500 experience) or the wight (500 gold, 700 experience). They can drain levels, so their rewards aren't worth it. If you can get to the point that you can defeat the troll, he's a reliably rewarding enemy, offering 1500 gold and 1800 experience. He's the third-to-last enemy, so he should be a lot harder, but something isn't programmed properly. He almost never hits you.
       

Grind all those experience points again? Or just reload?

        
I bought the best weapon and armor in the game, as well as a ring of protection +3, before purchasing any healing potions (easier just to reload than chug a 1000-gold-piece potion) or tomes. The tomes cost 2,000 gold pieces each and allow you to increase your dexterity and constitution to 18 and your strength to 18/100. (I don't think intelligence, wisdom, or charisma do anything. They can't be improved.) After that, the only things to spend money on are wands and potions.
          

Using a tome.

           
I made it to Level 8. It was taking too long to grind to Level 9. I found that the red dragon was unconquerable with melee weapons, even with a full stock of healing potions. But it was vulnerable to the lightning wand that you can buy in the magic shop. Four or five blasts and I was Captain of the Guard.
          

I don't want to accuse the author of anything, but our past experience with shareware titles makes me suspicious of the provenance of these graphics.

         
In a GIMLET, it earns:
           

• 2 points for the game world, featuring a basic backstory commensurate with the scope of the game.

• 1 point for character creation and development. There's no creation, and leveling doesn't seem to do much more than confer extra hit points.

• 0 points for no NPC interaction.

• 1 point for encounters and foes. The bestiary is Dungeons and Dragons standard, and the level-draining attacks of the undead are the only special attacks programmed in.

                 

A few statistics help you determine what foe you'll want to defeat next.

              

• 1 point for magic and combat. Your options are only to attack, use an item, or surrender.

                     

Using the Wand of Lightning in the final battle.

          

• 3 points for equipment. Only one weapon and armor slot, but the magic item selection is decent.

• 4 points for the economy. It lacks any complexity, but it remains relevant until the end.

• 2 points for a main quest.

• 2 points for graphics, sound, and interface. There are only a couple of sounds: hit, miss, and "you won!" Graphics are sparse enough that it might as well have been a text game. It's disappointing how all the monsters are represented by the same helmeted figure. I found the all-mouse interface annoying, as I do all all-mouse interfaces, but it was easy enough to determine what to click on.

• 2 points for gameplay. Too easy, too limited, and not replayable, it's at least short.

              
That gives us a final score of 18. It's about as minor as you can get and still qualify as an RPG at all. Author Robert Chancellor returned to the setting with Siege of Darkwood (1993), a light strategy game that he published through Pointware. Based in La Verne, California, Chancellor would later go on to work for Blizzard and Amazon Game Studios.
              

He sure got a lot of mileage out of that graphic.

             
What Darkwood does best is raise uncomfortable questions about what makes it a "lesser" RPG. Imagine that it is the menu town of something like a Gold Box game. Instead of leveling up and gaining wealth by fighting monsters in the arena in 30 seconds, you have to spend hours questing in dungeons, only to ultimately return to the city to spend your money and level up. What have all those extra hours gained you? Are they anything more than sound and fury? In stripping away the frills of typical, more elaborate RPGs, does Darkwood also strip illusions about the value of time spent playing those games? Can I honestly say that the endgame screen is less satisfying than a typical era title that takes 5 times as long but introduces no extra plot?

Those questions might be more worth thinking about if the combat in Darkwood were a bit more elaborate, a bit more tactical. I feel like if you're going to set your title entirely in the confines of an arena, combat needs to offer something more than clicking the icon of a sword until someone is dead. (Has any good RPG been set entirely in an arena? I'm open to the possibility.) Perhaps an action-oriented approach drawing upon the underlying attributes. Perhaps the ability to team up with other NPCs. As it is, Darkwood leaves me uncomfortable and unsatisfied. Perhaps I can pretend it's a prologue to Darklands.


****

I've removed Dragons Shard from the list after playing it for a while, then realizing that the shareware version caps character development at Level 5. This is my third half-hearted attempt to play a Bit Brothers game, all of which seem to feature the same engine. Until I can somehow obtain a full-featured copy of the game, I can't get far enough to bother writing about it.

Also gone is Mission: Thunderbolt, which it turns out is not really a 1992 game but a 1991 Macintosh release of a single mission of a mainframe game called Doomsday 2000 (1987). The game has been moved to re-consideration in its appropriate year.

Why Is Everyone Talking About Esports? What Is It All About? Is This A Passing Fad?

Almudena Berzosa Peñaranda

Status is reachable

Almudena Berzosa Peñaranda

Performance & eSports Psychology / Market &Competitive Intelligence. Business I... See more

7 articles

• 0
• SharEveryone is taking about eSports and many people, including politicians, business leaders, educators and parents, are asking themselves what is this all about. 

To keep it short and simple, Esports (electronic sports) is competitive video gaming at a professional level with organized competitions.

Video-game competitions have been around for quite some time, to find the first official video-game competition on record we need to go back to 1972 (take that Millennials!); it happened at Stanford University, where players were invited to compete in a space combat game called Spacewar, to win a prize of a one year's subscription of Rolling Stone magazine.

In 1980, video game competitions became known to a wide audience when Atari organized the Space Invaders Championship and Walter Day created Twin Galaxies.

Competitive gaming had worked its way into popular culture in the 1980's, but it's growth really accelerated in the 1990's when the internet opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) took the controls, graphics, gameplay and accessibility of video games to a new level and also boosted the growth of competitive gaming. They ran the Nintendo World Championships in 1990 and in 1994.

Some of the first esports leagues were founded in the late 1990's including the Quakecon , the Cyberathlete Professional League and the Professional Gamers League. Games like Counter-Strike, and Warcraft were already featured in those days.

But we could say that the flourishing of this industry happened in the 2000s when we saw the launch of the World Cyber Games and the Electronic Sports World Cup. These major international tournaments helped to set the tone for the kind of big competitions that would later come to define the esports world.

Many things happened in those years, but I want to underline the importance of the release of xBox live in 2002, bringing online play to consoles. Halo 2 was the first game to be broadcasted on a national TV and sponsors made competitive gaming a lucrative career choice. This was a game changer. From then, esports really took off.

The majority of the esports revenue comes from brand investments, which can be categorized as sponsorships, advertising and media rights.

The esports industry has grown at a tremendous pace, I feel it's safe to say that over the last decade it has become one of the fastest growing industries worldwide, benefiting from traction from new video game social media content, products and gaming events around the world.

Taking a look at the past few years, it is clear that esports has become a multi-billion dollar industry spanning every corner of the globe.

Recently Newzooestimated esports revenue will eclipse $1 billion in 2019. There is a growth rate of 22.3% year over year; the prediction is that revenue will reach $1.79 billion by 2022.

Can we consider this a passing trend? Absolutely not. The esports industry has passed the status of a fad and has become a serious industry with investors betting their money on this business, given the potential it holds. Hedge fund managers point to the rising popularity of esports events as an indicator of the market opportunity.

You may ask yourself "but why?", "why is this activity moving so much money?" 

The answer is simple: because of the number of people watching. 

This multi-billion dollar industry attracts not only passionate spectators (we are talking about millions of fans) but also major media outlets and even celebrities. Esports are here to stay.

Esports audiences can watch events by either visiting the arena live or online through gaming broadcasters. According to the World Economic Forum, the global esports audience reached 380 million last year, made up of 165 million dedicated esports fans and 215 million occasional viewers.

Millennials and Generation Z are the force driving this industry unlike any other.

To better illustrate this, just take a look at the top of the following table: 46 million people watched the IEM Katowice in 2017. Yes, this is not a typo: 46 million people.

There are many type of games and a variety of eSports franchises, but certain titles dominate this market (below are just some examples, please do not bombard my private inbox with complaints that your favourite game is not on the list)

League of Legends

LoL remains one of the most popular eSports games today in which teams battle to destroy the enemy's nexus. It is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games for Microsoft Windows and macOS.  The Prize Pool of LoL in 2018 was $14.12M (Source: esports observer)

Fortnite

With more than 200m players worldwide, the chances are either you, your friends or your children or your children's friends are already playing or watching it. This online video game was developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. The Prize Pool of Fortnite in 2018 was $19.96M(Source: esports observer).

The Fortnite World Cup in 2019 will have a prize pool of $100 million. 

Defense of the Ancients 2 (DOTA 2)

This is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Valve Corporation in 2013. 

Valve hosts an annual tournament called The International where the world's best DOTA players compete for prizes. The Prize Pool of Dota 2 in 2018 was $41.26M (Source: esports observer).

The International 2017 broke the record for the largest prize pool in eSports history at $24,787,916.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

CS:GOis a tactical multiplayer first-person shooter video game (part of the Counter-Strike series) developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve Corporation released in 2012 for Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, and OS X and later Linux as a downloadable title.

The Prize Pool of CS:GO in 2018 was $22.47M (Source: esports observer)

Other top esports games are Call of Duty, Overwatch, Hearthstone, Starcraft or Rainbow Six. 

I do not want to forget Mobile eSports games like: Clash Royale, Honor of Kings, Arena of Valor, VainGlory, Summoners War, Mobile Legends or the new comer: Brawl Stars. 

If you are not already a fan, you are probably starting to be curious and wondering: where can I watch esports?

They can be seen online via Twitch, Mixer, Youtube or even Facebook (all for free) and as we just said, you can also attend live competitions in dedicated esports venues. 

Esports has yet to achieve popularity in the conventional entertainment industry but the phenomenon is fast approaching an inflection point where it will certainly happen. Esports tournaments continue to grow in audience and economic impact, and each year brings these competitions closer to the level of popularity and acceptance enjoyed by traditional sports. 

Observing the trends as described above, I am inclined to assume that esports is definetly not a passing fad. 

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Almudena Berzosa is a member of the Executive Team at the Swiss eSports Federation.

For more content like this, follow her on LinkedIn, Twitter @A_berzosa and on Facebook at Facebook/BuildingYourBackbone

This article was also published in the Website of the Swiss Esports Federation

ASOIAF: Tywin Lannister 40Pt Army

My point exactly.

In my previous article, I gave you guys the rundown for how I go about building army lists.  I always start with the Commander first and then try to take units that best take advantage of their tactics cards.  Well, I decided to get the party started with my favorite character from GoT:  Tywin Lannister.  Lannisters, in general, have a ton of control elements and I think Tywin just adds to the flavor in a big way.  He is a battlefield commander so that means you put him with your frontline troops in any one of the units that he can be taken in.  Since he's considered an infantry character, you have to put him in one of your infantry units.  I decided to put Tywin inside a unit of Mountain Men because they have a pretty respectable save of 4+.  Besides, having two chances to apply Panic-based damage is great.  More on this later.

For now, let's take a look at Tywin himself and his Tactics cards to see what he offers us:

Just look at this badass.

From the get-go, you can see that Tywin is all about making your opponents' units Weakened and then exploiting those tokens and effects to your advantage.  Immediately, you can see that Tywin's Commander card has built-in Lannister Supremacy and Fear of the Lion.  Fear of the Lion combos really nicely with Tywin's tactics cards because it allows him to place a free Weaken token on any enemy unit within Long Range of his unit when he activates.  I put him with Mountain Men because MMs already have built-in Vicious so on the offense, they can make opponents take Panic Tests with a -2 modifier.  When they attack back, Tywin's Lannister Supremacy makes it so if I roll a 7+ on my Panic test, my opponent has to take another test at -2 again.  This is some pretty silly free damage if my opponent rolls poorly and can also be a form of damage negation because the more models they lose to Panic checks, the less damage they will do because of the ranks lost.  Throw Weaken on top of this from Tywin and it becomes a force multiplier.

The Lion doesn't mess around.

The Tactics cards themselves are very nasty. Exploit Weakness is a perfect example of a card that kicks your opponent when they're down.  If you spend the Weaken token, you can force your opponent re-roll all of their successful hits and any 1s to pop up will deal automatic wounds to their unit on top of whiffing on their attacks.  This is extremely effective at taking down heavy cavalry because it essentially turns that units attack into wounds that bypass saves.  The Lion's Wrath is a great card because it affects ALL enemy units on the board that has Weaken on them and it lasts until the end of the round.  You will hear me say this a lot, but anything that lasts an entire round is super good.  Players take alternating turns activating their units, but rounds last after all player turns are finished.  This means that for the duration of the round, anything Weakened on the battlefield will be moving -1 movement AND suffering Disorderly Charge on a roll of 1-2.  First, this card auto-applies a Weaken effect anywhere on the board, but Disorderly Charge is super frustrating when it happens.  Another example of Lannisters kicking you while you're down, but Disorderly Charge robs you from your ability to re-roll hits on a Charge AND essentially silences you for the rest of that unit's turn.  Players cannot play Tactics cards for the remainder of that unit's action, and if you miss the actual charge itself, that unit has to take a Panic test.  Lastly, we have Lannister Intimidation.  This is pretty much a hard silence on the enemy unit and all of its attachments until the end of the round.  Again, end of the round here folks, Tywin doesn't F around.  Almost everything he does is centered around making your opponents' units weaker while giving slightly leveraging your battlefield position.

Pycelle is an auto-include with Tywin.

As for unit selection, there are quite a few things you can do and I think Tywin is one of the more flexible commanders for how you want to build the list.  To make things a little easier, let me first start off by saying that you should probably take Pycelle as your first NCU.  Pycelle is incredible with Tywin because he puts Weaken tokens on your opponents when he claims a zone.  This is exactly what Tywin needs when playing his Tactics cards and Pycelle on the Tactics zone after The Lion's Wrath will see 3 enemy units Weakend on a single turn.  Now, Varys is pretty much one of the best NCUs in the game IMO.  His ability is incredibly good even if you only have a limited amount of Order tokens.  The ability to stop a crucial game-altering tactics board play or NCU ability from triggering when claiming a zone can be huge.  Since Lannisters is a control-heavy faction in general, you will see me playing Varys a lot in my lists.

Alright, enough talk, here's the list:

Faction: House Lannister
Commander: Tywin Lannister – Lord of Casterly Rock
Points: 40 (4 Neutral)

Combat Units:
• Lannister Guardsmen (5)
  with Assault Veteran (1)
• House Clegane Mountain Men (6)
  with Tywin Lannister – Lord of Casterly Rock (0)
• House Clegane Mountain Men (6)
  with Assault Veteran (1)
• Lannister Crossbowmen (6)
• Knights of Casterly Rock (8)

Non-Combat Units:
• Pycelle – Grand Maester (3)
• Lord Varys – The Spider (4)

Made with ASOIAFBuilder.com

As you can see, I have quite a bit of diversity in there with 7 total activations (5 combat and 2 NCUs).  Combat activations matter for deployment, but total activations matter for how much control you have over the board state.  That will be its own article at another time, but this isn't the first time I've played a minis game where activation and unit activation order matters a lot.  Anyways, let's take a look at the rest of the list I have here:  You will see Guardsman with Assault Vet, Tywin in MM and another unit of MM because they're a rock-solid unit.  Assault Veterans because I love the aggression and they are great with Tywin because Weaken basically ensures that there will be a second round of combat and your guys will attrition quite well.  For the Guardsman, you can also choose to bring along a Guard Captain to auto-pass Panic and therefore guarantees Lannister Supremacy every time.

When it comes to rounding out the rest of the army, Crossbowmen are there so they can pick off enemy units from range.  From here, you can generally branch into any direction you want to bring for the meta.  You can take another unit of Lannister Guards, another unit of MM, but for diversity and the ability to harass objectives, I decided to go with Xbows.  If you think about it, if you're running a pretty aggressive infantry army, having 7 shots of Sundering from Long Range that hits on 3s is no joke.  On top of that, I've decided to go wih a unit of Knights of Casterly Rock because they're a pretty decent unit to have for the points.  Some people don't like them because you need to play them well and they're not push and win like the Flayed Men, but if you get them on the flank of a combat you need to win, you will like them a lot.  They're designed to win on the charge so if you're not destroying units on the charge, think about saving them until you do or else you'll have to waste turns (or Manuever on the Tactics Board) to set them up again.

Stay tuned for my next article where I cover one of my favorite Stark lists to play right now!